USA Electoral College 2004
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USA Electoral College 2004
| Wed, 10-13-2004 - 5:30pm |
Dear IVillagers,
Nothing would please me more than eliminating the Electoral College system,
and having a "one person equals one vote" system,
to reflect exactly the votes of USA citizens.
Nonetheless, as IVillage cl-Libraone has noted here on IVillage,
that Colorado has the option to vote into law that Colorado's Electoral College votes be 'split' between the candidates- proportioned to be much more a reflection of voter's
actual votes.
Colorado's system shall be better than the present mess,
and would go into effect this election, if passed by Colorado voters-
my hope is that this does indeed happen, Election 2004 !!!
ForeverHugs,
--Genietowner

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The point is not to have sympathy for them or that their vote should count more-the point is our founding fathers devised a way to balance the interests of individual states within our republic with the interests of the general population. States rights were, and remain, a huge issue. If you recall the American Revolution was in large part due to people feeling unfairly represented by a strong central government-our founding fathers were acutely aware of the need to balance power between the federal government and local, grass roots interests.
It was a brilliant compromise, not a dumb one, and has worked quite well up and until we ended up with an election of such ridiculously close outcome. I hope and pray that doesn't happen again, but like I said there is no hope anyway of the electoral college being done away with. You'll never get the 3/4 of states needed to ratify such a measure, as it would only benefit a few of the most populous states.
Edited 10/14/2004 11:43 pm ET ET by liveanew
And I can understand the innate appeal of each person's vote counting equally. But again, we don't live in a true democracy, we live in a democratic republic, for many reasons of independance and self-governance the idea of states rights being balanced with the rights of the majority is a great one, IMO.
http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/fsip.html
http://members.tripod.com/%7Ereno4governor/index-30.html
http://www.buzzflash.com/mailbag/04/08/mai04247.html
http://www.gregpalast.com/bestdemocracymoneycanbuychapter1.pdf
http://www.yuricareport.com/Mail/Mail_Bag.html
Well, that's why we have two houses of Congress-one in which each state is represented equally, and one which is population based. Another brilliant compromise balancing states rights with proportional representation.
< Just calling some small geographic area a state for traditions sake >
Not sure what you mean by that-are you advocating we dissolve states and become one big heap? States evolved into separate entities based on geographic factors, differences in industry and culture, and even today I think most states have very different and often competing interests that ought to be represented, at least in some sort of balance with population based representation.
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